Living Ghost
by Embers of Inspiration
Summary: The past never really goes away. It's a small world, really, and Brandt wasn't surprised when he ran into someone he used to know.


Personality adjustment, they called it.

Changing his name from James to Brandt was what Will called it.

There was a lot more involved than that, but in his mind that's what it all boiled down to. 'Brandt' was more stable than 'James' psychologically, but he still carried all of James's best qualities: his bomb tech, sniper and leadership skills.

Brandt didn't smoke.

He became everything the IMF wanted him to be. He became a soldier in another war, or maybe it was the same war being fought on a different front. It didn't matter to him: Will, that was, not James or Brandt.

War was war, and it was his calling.

* * *

Croatia happened.

A woman had been lost on his watch. An innocent.

He had a philosophy: There was a difference between those who had signed up for the dangerous jobs and those who hadn't. The loss of those who hadn't had always hit him hard.

Afterward he lit a cigarette and filled his lungs with smoke and the taste of death.

Then he went back to headquarters and retired from field work.

* * *

"Abort!" Ethan's voice crackled through the static over the com.

"But," Benji protested, looking around at the maze of wires and nondescript black boxes that littered the floor, "this is the capitol."

"Buildings are replaceable," Ethan told him, "even nationally important ones. You, however, aren't. Leave the bombs. We'll call the police and they'll call in a bomb squad."

Will bent down to examine the box in the middle of the room. He flipped it over on its side revealing red digital numbers that were making a steady count down from 06:58… 06:57… 06:56. "It's got a timer," he told Ethan and Jane, both of whom weren't in the storage room. "If we let this blow a lot of people are going to die."

"We alert D.C. security and get them to order an evac," Jane postulated.

"Evacuate the nation's capitol in five minutes?" Benji asked. "Is that even possible?"

"No," Will said. He slid off his belt and detached a small tool kit that he always carried around. "Maybe. Call security and have them start an evac anyway. I'll take care of this."

"Right," Benji stated, "because you know how to disarm bombs."

Will glanced at him. "I do, actually."

There was silence over the com-link. Will had thought that Ethan at least had read his file. Clearly he had skipped some parts.

"Look, I know what I'm doing. Just call the police, secret service, whatever and get yourselves out of here."

"We can't just leave you there by yourself," Jane objected.

"You can and you will," Will told her. "If I get myself blown up I'd at least like to know that I didn't get my teammates blown up too."

"Do you need help?" Benji was hovering behind Will's shoulder, carefully scrutinizing every action Will was making.

"I need you to not be in the line of fire."

Ethan's voice crackled through the com again. "Brandt's right. Get out of there Benji, it's too dangerous."

Benji took offence at that. "You're letting Will stay."

"He has a chance to save the people in this building."

"But he could die."

"We could all die at any time. It's in the job description."

Will interrupted with a, "Quiet on the set please." He held a pair of pliers in his left hand and a set of yellow, blue and green wires in his right.

Benji turned to say something, thought better of it and merely gave Will and tight squeeze on the shoulder.

Will didn't notice when Benji left.

04:23, Will could hear the sounds of Ethan communicating (arguing?) with the police over his cell.

04:00, chaos. The sounds of people running, not walking, to get to safety. Will grit hit teeth, blocked it all out and continued concentrating.

03:44, he was a little more than half-way done. He could do this. He just had to pace himself.

03:02, it eventually came to his attention that someone was shouting his name in his ear.

"Brandt," it was Jane. "Status."

"Busy," he bit out.

"How much time do we have left?" He could tell she was trying hard not to sound stressed.

"Two minutes, fifty-eight seconds."

"We're not going to make it," Benji obviously had no qualms about sounding panicked.

"We'll make it." Ethan's voice was clam and reassuring. "And then we'll find out we needn't have worried because Brandt disarmed all the bombs."

Will tuned them out again. At 02:14 he paused and wiped perspiration off his forehead which was more the result of intense concentration than any would-be anxiety.

Ethan's voice interrupted Will again. "Time check."

"One minute, thirty seconds."

"Get out of there Brandt. You've done all you can."

"Have you evacuated everyone else?"

"No," Jane said quietly.

Will kept working.

01:02, he stopped and analyzed his situation. There were nine bombs that still needed to be disarmed. If he did one for every ten seconds he would have a nice cushion of left-over time. He set to work.

00:11, done. Will watched as the timer ticked down to 00:10 and frowned in confusion.

00:09, a small black box on the other side of the room caught his attention. He would have missed it if he had been standing anywhere else. He sprinted toward it and hoped there weren't more similarly hidden boxes.

He knelt in front of the box and removed the top casing. With careful, deliberate movements he unscrewed a secondary cover and then tossed it to the side. He straightened out the tangle of wires hidden underneath and snipped the one that would disarm the bomb.

He closed his eyes and breathed out.

When he and the rest of the building didn't immediately blow up he got up and walked back over to the center of the room. The timer sat there innocently, frozen at 00:01.

He laughed. It started out as a chuckle and transformed into a deep, full-bodied effort. When he finished the silence was abrupt, the sound having been absorbed by the flat acoustics of the room.

He pressed the communication button on his com-link. "We're done."

"You got them all?" Jane and Benji said nearly at the same time.

"I got them all," Will confirmed, spinning a small strand of wire in-between his fingers.

"Bomb squad's here," Ethan informed everyone.

"Good," Will said, "they can clean up this mess. I'm coming out."

"The White House's Director of Security wants to meet you."

"Huh." He stuck his wire in his pocket a pulled a small, nearly flat box out of his tool kit. He flicked it open and took out a cigarette and a small lighter. Once he was a safe enough distance away he lit it and waited for the nicotine to hit his system.

Outside people were milling around with worried expressions and distressed whispers.

Will spotted the back of Ethan's head and politely pushed his way through the crowd. Some people looked offended by his cigarette but today his manners only extended so far. He broke through a line of people and greeted his team with a lazy wave.

"Brandt!" Benji exclaimed at the same time Jane said, "You smoke?"

"Hi," Will said to Benji. "Yes," he told Jane. Then he turned to his team leader. "You said something about meeting someone?"

Another face caught his eye and he breathed out a lungful of smoke. "JT? That you?"

The man, instead of answering Will, demanded of Ethan, "_This_ is your bomb tech?"

Ethan looked amused. "I assume you two have met?"

"Nice to see you too Sanborn."

"Will you fucker," JT said, extending his hand, "I can't believe you're still alive."

Will shook JT's hand. "You and me both man. Director of Security?"

"I'm good at it."

Will slapped JT's back. "I know you are."

"You're IMF I hear."

"And don't we both look like respectable members of society, standing here in our suits and dress shoes."

"I don't know about you but I _am _a respectable member of society."

Will shrugged. "I try. Some days I succeed."

JT surveyed the still-intact White House. "The president's probably going to want to give you an award."

"He can keep it."

JT gave him a skeptical look.

"Seriously Sanborn, do me a favor. You never saw me here. I disappeared before you could find me."

"Crowd shy?" JT teased.

Will took a step closer to JT and lowered his voice. "There was a reason I never contacted you after Iraq."

"And here I thought it was just you being your usual charming self."

"There were conditions to my reassignment."

"Like?"

"My name isn't James anymore for one."

"Brandt?" JT guessed.

Will nodded.

"I get it, you were reinvented. No old contacts."

"None."

"I'm sorry man."

"It's been for the best, more or less." He stepped back, ignoring the questioning looks his team was giving him. "Take care JT."

"You too Will, you and your family."

Something flashed across Will's face, too quickly for anyone to see what it was. "What family?"

JT stared. "Oh, right," he shook his head. "Sorry, I was thinking of someone else."

"Yeah," Will agreed, "you were."

"So," Benji ventured, "bomb tech, huh?"

Will's team did casual very well, but he knew that Ethan and Jane were listening in curiously. They all stopped in front of a blue van they had hijacked somewhere along the Ohio/Pennsylvania border.

"It was a long time ago," he told them, "a different life."

For a second he let himself think about his son. He wondered what school he was going to now, and how his not-wife/girlfriend was doing raising him by herself. He wondered what she told their son about him. Was he a war hero? Did they bring flowers to his grave and send up prayers over his tombstone? Was he the kind of dad who could be a role-model to his son even after his death?

Better that he wasn't. Better that his son heard the truth: about how detached his father was from society, about how much more he had loved war than his own family. Better that his son grew up and chose a safe profession and barely spared a thought to the small, impersonal stone that marked the passing of Sgt. William James's life. It was better that way.

Will dropped the remainder of his cigarette and ground it into the asphalt with the heel of his shoe. "Let's go," he said, meeting the eyes of his teammates squarely. "We still have a mission to finish."


End file.
